by Devney Perry
“Hello, Mrs. Wylder. It’s so nice to meet you.” I hold out my hand and she grabs it immediately to shake it warmly.
“It’s so nice to meet you too.” Her smile widens as she glances to Easton, my hand still in hers. “She’s so pretty.”
I blush immediately as Easton chuckles. “Yes, she is. Momma, this is Scout Dalton. Scout, this is my mom, Meg.” He looks toward me and for the first time I can see the apprehension fade.
Meg stares at me a beat longer than normal, eyes narrowing as she gives me a quick and unabashed study. “Oh, I’m so sorry, where are my manners? Please, come in.”
In an instant she becomes a ball of energy with nervous hands as she turns to go inside, hitting her hip against the doorjamb, apologizing, and then doing it again as she enters. Easton’s hand is back in mine again and for the briefest of seconds he pulls me against him, presses the softest of kisses to my temple and murmurs, “Thank you,” before ushering me through the door.
The inside is clean but definitely lived in. The couch cushions have been worn bare in some spots, the far room is stacked with boxes of products and gadgets that seem to never have been opened, and the television is on, a baseball game playing on its screen.
It’s an Aces game, that much is obvious, but I’m a little startled when I see Easton, his number 44 visible when he turns and walks back to the plate from the pitcher’s mound. I meet Easton’s gaze briefly, and he just shakes his head as if this is normal. That she lives in the past and watches replays of his old games.
“Easton’s never brought home a girl before,” she murmurs as she straightens magazines. “Do you want a drink? Let’s have a drink,” she says despite my polite refusal.
I hear Easton sigh softly as his gaze follows Meg when she flits to the kitchen. The sound of bottles clinking fills the small space followed by her muttered self-chastisement. There’s more clinking. Easton clenches his jaw and shakes his head before looking back to me. “Excuse me for a sec, okay?”
“Of course.” I try to catch his eye to tell him it’s okay, that she’s just nervous, but I’m sure he’s made the same excuses for her illness more times than he can count. Besides, he’s already three strides to the kitchen, his voice a soothing murmur before the glass bottles clink once again. Letting them have their privacy, I gravitate to the farthest part of the room to study the picture frames that clutter every inch of the wall.
And every single one of them is of Easton.
Much like Easton’s jerseys in his private field, these pictures tell the story of his life and in much more detail. A toddler sitting on his mother’s lap as she looks adoringly at her husband. A little boy standing beside his father with a fishing pole in hand and a bass flopping on its hook. A slightly older Easton, in a cowboy hat way too big for his head, standing between his mom and dad—both stunning in their own rights. Snapshots of a childhood he doesn’t talk much about.
And then the photos begin to change. Cal becomes absent while many of them are of Easton in various baseball uniforms. The transition from boy to man is visible in each one. There are a few others, and I assume they’re from his prom, graduation, and family functions.
I could stare at them forever, but the quiet murmuring across the room pulls my attention. Easton is hunched down so he’s eye level with his mom, their profiles mirror images, and he’s talking softly to her, trying to calm her. He takes a glass off the counter that’s full of amber liquid and hands it to her, his hands cupping hers before she lifts it to her lips and takes a sip.
Both of their eyes close as she drinks—hers as she gets the fix she needs from the drug that provides it and his from knowing his love for her is not enough to break the cycle. And when he looks my way, the defeat is in his eyes but so is the love for her. He hates her addiction—that much is obvious—so, he does the only thing he can: love her. It’s heartbreaking to know how hard this is for him and to see it firsthand.
“What are you thinking about?” His fingers twirl a lock of my hair as the fireflies flit all around us and the crickets and frogs add to the night’s soundtrack.
“A lot of things,” I murmur against the heat of his bare chest.
“Like?”
“Like why we both have perfectly nice beds and yet we always find ourselves having sex elsewhere.”
His laugh rumbles through his chest. “Are you saying you don’t like the atmosphere?”
I lift my head to where the moon’s light reflects off the lake water, hear the trees rustle in the breeze around us, and know there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than right here, right now.
“It’s no fuss, no frills.”
“Exactly. You’re a no-fuss, no-frills girl.” He plants a kiss on the top of my head. “And this is romantic. You can say it’s not, but I know you’re a secret romantic at heart.”
“Looks to me like someone might have listened to a romance book or two.”
“Oh, please.” He pats my bare bottom with his free hand. “I knew there would be no distractions out here and I needed that. With you.”
“Agreed. Besides, who could say no to a sudden stop on the way home for some skinny-dipping and a little lovemaking in the moonlight?” I return the kiss to the middle of his chest and love the way his fingers tighten on my hair momentarily. A subtle acknowledgement that I affect him.
“Not this guy.” He falls silent for a bit more and then says, “You said you were thinking about a lot of things. What else?”
“Let’s see,” I say as I rest my chin on his chest and look up to him. “I was thinking how cool it must be to have two parents who love you so much they’d do anything for you. I’ve never had that.”
“I’m lucky.” His sigh fills the night around us. “Even with everything with my mom and how demanding my dad is, I know I’m lucky.”
“You’re good with her, you know.”
The laugh he emits is self-deprecating. “I feel like I’m just feeding her addiction sometimes, but at the same time, I know I’ve done everything I can to help her, so what else am I supposed to do? Push her away? Keep her under lock and key? She won’t leave the damn trailer park. I’ve tried to buy her a house, move her closer . . . she won’t do it. As you could see with the recorded baseball game, she’s stuck in the past. She says the love of her life will come back for her someday and God only knows who that is. Sometimes I think it’s no one at all, just a figment of her imagination the alcohol encourages most days. Other times I think it’s a real person.”
“Maybe it’s your dad.” The words are out without thought and he shrugs at them.
“Now you’re appealing to the ten-year-old boy in me who used to pray for my parents to get back together so I could have a normal life. I gave up that hope a long time ago.”
“It must have been hard.”
“No harder than what you had to deal with,” he says. I love he can say it so casually and I don’t get my defenses up. After letting the comment settle, I turn the topic back to him.
“You’re good with her. You’re sweet and loving and most of all patient. A lot of people would have pushed her away, but not you. You’re her whole world and it shows.”
“Yeah, well, let’s hope she’s okay over the next few months while I’m gone. Then in off-season I can figure a long-term plan on how to take care of her.”
“She seemed good with it. Like knowing you were going to be gone was a temporary thing.”
“She hid it well, but I could tell she was freaking out.”
“Like I told you, when we left, if she needs help, I could come out here when I’m in town.”
“I can’t ask that of you, Scout. It’s always a crapshoot with her. I never know what I’m going to walk into when I show up. Today was good. She knew I was coming, so she wasn’t occupying her resident booth at the bar. Other days, I’m left to clean up what the alcohol has left me with.”
“You’re a good son, Easton. And the offer still stands.”
“Thanks.” His
finger traces a line up and down the length of my spine and chills me despite the warm night air. “Do you want to talk about what you were so upset about when I showed up earlier? I can think it was over me, but I’m not that much of an arrogant jerk to make that assumption.”
“I had a one-sided argument with my dad,” I finally admit and then fall silent, not wanting to ruin this time I have left with him.
“You didn’t get the contract then?”
The harsh words I said to my dad come flooding back. “That’s the problem, I did get one. Cory granted me a probationary agreement until the end of the season. At that time, he’ll decide if they want to sign me for next season.”
“You don’t sound happy.”
“Why are you surprised by that? I feel like I’m betraying you by taking it. Having to work for Cory, for the team, just to fulfill my dad’s wishes . . . it makes my skin crawl.”
“We all do things for our parents sometimes that don’t always feel good,” he muses with a tone that tells me he’s talking about himself as well. His mom. His dad.
“I told my dad as much. I said some things I probably shouldn’t have but . . . I couldn’t help it. Between what you said to me last night and then having to deal with Cory and feel like I was compromising my morals, I couldn’t hold it back anymore.”
He pulls me tighter against him and holds me there for a moment. I appreciate him not trying to give advice or fix anything and just let me get it out.
“I understand why it’s important to him—the contract—but is it really that important? Shouldn’t spending the time he has left with those he loves be more important?”
“And I assume that’s what you told him?”
I chuckle. “In terms a lot less polite.”
“Yeah, well,” he says, “there’s always that time when you have to stand up to them. It’s not easy, but you always regret the things left unsaid more.”
“Let’s hope I don’t regret the things I did say.” Let alone what I didn’t say.
Our conversation falls quiet to the sounds of crickets and frogs and the occasional jake brake on the highway a few miles east. And the longer we lie here and enjoy each other, the more I think about the past twenty-four hours. The things I said to Easton. The things I didn’t say. The fact that I told him I loved him and he didn’t accept it. That he thought it was a desperate plea to ask for forgiveness when it was probably the truest thing I said in that whole argument.
I need to say it again.
“Easton, there’s something I want to clarify about last night. There was something I said that—”
“No,” he says as he shifts on his elbow, my body moving until we’re face to face. He puts a finger under my chin and tilts my chin up. “I don’t want to talk about last night. Or our argument. Or baseball at all.” He leans forward, brushing his lips to mine, his tongue a teasing touch. “I want to lie here in the long grass with you.” Another brush of his lips. “Hear your laugh.” This time the kiss lasts a little longer. “Taste your skin.” An open-mouthed kiss on the underside of my jaw. “And make love to you until we watch the sun rise.” If he’ll accept a sigh as an answer then he just got it, and when he leans back to look in my eyes, I can see he already knows it. “I want to drown in you tonight, Scout. I want to forget the world, forget what’s going to happen tomorrow, and drown in everything about you, starting now.”
With my heart in his hands, his lips on mine, Easton lays me down and does just what he promises.
There is no further conversation needed. There is no need to mention the obvious about what will happen tomorrow morning. There is no scramble to reassure each other that we can survive this . . . because for some reason, we just will.
I know it.
And that’s the weirdest feeling of all.
Easton
“Hey.” I press a kiss to her temple.
“Mmm.”
“I’ve gotta go,” I whisper when all I want to do is climb back in bed beside her warm and way too tempting body and pretend like I don’t have to leave.
Her body jerks as she wakes and realizes that even though my room is still dark, it’s time for me to go. My duffel on the kitchen counter and my dad waiting in the car to drive me to the airport confirm that.
“East.” Her voice is a sleep-drugged rasp and her hair is a wild mess that I’m sure still has leaves in it from last night. Both call to every part of me to stay. And when awareness hits her, she sits up in bed, eyes alert but movements still sluggish. “Let me brush my teeth. Get up. I need to walk you out. I just—”
“Shhh,” I say as I lower myself to the bed. “Don’t get up. Stay in bed and get some sleep.”
I pull her into me and just hold on. Breathe her in. Her perfume. Her shampoo. Our sex still on her skin.
“I’m gonna miss you,” she murmurs against my chest and fuck if I don’t feel her chin quiver as she fights back tears.
“Me too, but we’ll see each other soon. We’ll talk every day. We’ll make this work, Scout. I haven’t fought this hard to lose you.”
She clings to me, and I can feel her shoulders shudder. I fucking hate that I’m doing this to her—leaving—when I promised I wouldn’t. “I meant what I said,” she finally says.
“What was that?” I ask, hand smoothing down her hair.
“I love you.”
And right there—three simple fucking words and I’m a dead man. A total goner to this woman who is a mess of contradictions and who unexpectedly stole my heart along the way.
Yeah, she said it the other night. She hurled it at me in a fucking argument, but I’m no stranger to a woman desperate enough to declare her love for me to try and keep me on the line. So I let it go. I didn’t bring it up. And I figured if she meant it, she’d say it again.
And she just did.
So this, right here, right now, is real. She means it. And fuck me, it feels damn good.
“It took you long enough.” I chuckle into the crown of her head and pull her in a little closer as she struggles to get away from me.
“You’re an arrogant ass,” she says as she swats playfully at my chest.
"Yeah, well, this arrogant ass is in love with you, too.” I bring my hands to the side of her cheeks so I can look at her eyes through the dim light. I want her to see I mean it.
“Oh.” Her smile is unsteady and her eyes glisten with tears.
“Yeah. Oh. But it’s true,” I murmur before brushing my lips against hers, morning breath and all, because I’m not going to pass up one last chance to kiss her.
And when I walk out of my house to this new unknown, I feel like maybe all of this can work out.
I never let her broach how we’re going to manage this.
I never let her have a chance to get spooked.
I just told her how it was going to be. Me going to work. Her going to work. And us making this thing between us work.
Besides, she loves me.
Me.
Just when I felt like everything was falling apart, I’m beginning to wonder if maybe they were finally falling into place.
Scout
He told me he loved me.
Of course I was naked, half asleep, and he was leaving, but he told me he loved me. Was in love with me.
How perfect was that since we’re so far from perfect anyway?
He told me he loved me and I didn’t spook.
For a girl who’s shied away from those emotions her whole life, to hear those three words and feel like I’m walking on air instead of wanting to run, is a pretty crazy about face.
But I’m in his bed, surrounded by his scent, and I know it’s going to take everything I have to leave it, knowing I won’t see him again for a while. I roll over and am met with my cell phone next to me. Odd. I know there’s no way I left it there. When I reach for it, there is a Post-It note on its screen. All it says is “Listen to me.”
I scramble to sit up, eager to hear the message like a ridiculous schoolgi
rl waiting for her crush to call.
“Good morning,” Easton’s voice comes through the speaker in that rough grit of his that has me closing my eyes and missing him already, although it has only been a few hours since he left. “Grab my shirt. Put it on. And then listen to your next message.”
With a smile on my lips, I frantically look around the room for his shirt only to notice it’s actually on the pillow beside my head. I laugh to the empty room as I pick it up, bring it to my nose and breathe him in before putting it on.
“First things first, Kitty. I left something for you on my favorite spot in the kitchen.”
I’m out of the bed, racing down the hallway to the kitchen island, my mind thinking back to last week when he was making us grilled-cheese sandwiches for dinner. How I hopped up on the counter to watch and before I knew it, my thighs were parted, his tongue was working me into a frenzy, and the sandwiches ended up burned to a crisp.
Best grilled cheese I’ve ever not eaten.
When I reach the kitchen, there’s a calendar on top of the counter. It takes me a minute to figure out what I am looking at. In his scrawled chicken scratch, Easton has marked the days of the month through to the end of the season with a D for Wrangler’s games and an A for Aces games.
“See the orange circles,” he says in the message. “Those are the days we get to see each other, whether we’re in passing cities or we have a day or two off. I’m staking a claim so you don’t decide to hang out with your other boyfriends on those dates.” I know he’s joking, but my head is shaking back and forth like he’s crazy. “Next clue: The first time you ever came to my apartment, how was it I finally got you to come here?”
I stand with my hands on my hips for a second as I look toward the glass wall of windows and then realize what he’s referring to. The bathroom. I jog to the guest bathroom in the foyer and laugh at what I see there. On the counter is a CD case. It’s an audiobook. Stephen King’s The Last Gunslinger.
